Having never worked with acrylic before it has been an interesting challenge to accurately, and tidily cut my materials. The cylinder sections were quite easy to do, requiring only a junior hacksaw and some finishing with sandpaper to get a nice square edge. The flat sheets with the need for true edges suitable for gluing provided more of a challenge.

I tried using a hacksaw which in my hands was too inaccurate and resulted in a wavy line, entirely unsuitable for bonding to the face of another sheet.
I next tried to score and snap the sheets, but again this gave a poor finish, and sometimes causes a “step” profile in the edge. My final DIY attempt was to use a fine toothed bandsaw; this gave a truer edge but caused too much chipping of the edges, even when I tried protecting them with tape.

My final solution was to reach out to the Faculty of Arts and Creative Technologies to see what solutions they had. To my delight they have 2 laser cutting tables, 1 of which was suitable for my needs, available to hire. This was the perfect solution, guaranteeing straight cuts with a great finish – ready to glue.